The life of Berta Domínguez (Badajoz, 1993) stopped and restarted in 2017. At the age of 23 and a medical student, a fatal accident in a swimming pool left her in a wheelchair. Her new physical condition closed the doors to fulfill her dream: to become a surgeon. She changed her specialty option –family medicine- and began the titanic effort of preparing for the MIR (with a body with hardly any mobility) combining it with tough rehabilitation sessions. She got it, but with the contract signed and one day after starting work, she was told that she was “not suitable” for the position. She now struggles to be able to work in a medical specialty, even if she is not the one she wanted, while she laments the systematic violation of the rights of people with disabilities.
Berta still remembers when, at the age of 16, her father, a surgeon, allowed her to undergo an operation that “got complicated” and lasted six hours. He came out of it “loving” the surgery. And that was her goal when she entered medicine, a career she studied at the University of Salamanca. But when she was close to fulfilling her dream, everything changed. During a party, she dove headfirst into a pool with such misfortune that her hands slipped and her head hit the ground. She broke her C5 vertebra and fractured C6, which caused her quadriplegia which, due to perseverance and a lot of rehabilitation, is now tetraparesis (involvement of all extremities but some mobility).
With 89% disability, this young woman needs help with all day-to-day tasks, although she can now do her own hair. Losing her independence was one of the things that she found most difficult to accept: “I went from studying and living alone with a cat to being admitted to a hospital” (in the hospital for paraplegics in Toledo), explains this young woman. And there she ran into her new reality: “I ran out of (skilled) hands and had to abandon the idea of ??being a surgeon.” After giving up on her second option, psychiatry, due to lack of grade, she opted for family medicine. She combined her studies, for which she had to change her method, with the essential rehabilitation. She could no longer take notes manually, for example. “I studied with my legs up and pillows because my legs would cross from stress,” she recalls. “It was a constant frustration… I would drop my pencil and I had to tell my boyfriend so he could pick it up for me,” she explains. This adaptation to her new circumstances was not easy “it is a bombardment for the head.”
Luckily, he pulled the car with the help of his sister Paulina, who was also preparing the MIR. And he vindicates his effort: “Let everyone study the MIR with quadriplegia, let’s see who gets it!” She also remembers that her accident was a “slap from reality” because she remembers that before she was “very bratty and capricious.”
He passed the MIR in January with position 8,171, but was left without a position after being awarded a position in family medicine. With the contract signed with the 12 de octubre hospital in Madrid (the city where he lives after the accident), he explains that he received an email with a cold “Not suitable”. When asking for explanations, the argument they gave her was that she cannot examine patients. “They have not valued what I can and cannot do,” she claims.
But Dominguez is angry that no one had warned him of the limitation of his disability in advance and that the decision was not based on any evidence. In the midst of frustration and powerlessness over the situation, he has decided to continue fighting to claim that after the great effort and having approved the MIR “they don’t give me the position.” They advised him to ask for an exceptional change of specialty. But many of the others that interested him were already taken, so he has finally chosen to accept the vacancy in preventive medicine and public health at Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid.
And even so, he still does not have his future work tied up, with the consequent uncertainty that this generates for him. “I should have been working for a month and I’m still waiting without being able to plan anything for the next few months because I don’t know what will happen to me in a week,” she laments. She resists, but she blurts out one of the many curse words that have been circulating in her head for days: “She’s a bitch.”
These last few weeks have been terrible for this young doctor. Lack of appetite, weight loss… And sleeping is not an easy task because nightmares are recurrent. “I’m very tired and very angry and it makes me spasm,” she explains. Because she does not stop verifying the systematic violation of the rights of people with disabilities in Spain. And she gives an example from daily life explaining the odyssey involved in taking a plane.
He lived it in his flesh when he had to pay for a ticket in first class to be able to fly to Argentina to a wedding with Alan, his partner for four years. She had the medical certificate that warned that she cannot spend a long time with her legs lowered because her tension “subsides”. But no one paid any attention to her and she had to pay first class price and fly separately from her boyfriend. That is why she asks that there be spaces enabled for special needs.
He says that he has requested an appointment in person with the Ministry of Health so that they “know my physical abilities”, but he assures that they answer that they are not granted in person. “I don’t know if they are demigods to make decisions without seeing people,” she laments.
“They saw me like this and decided to give me the unfit thinking that I was going to keep quiet, but I am not going to do it while they take away what I have. I am not going to get tired or exhausted”, warns Berta Domínguez. She asks that the law be changed and regulate access to the profession for people with disabilities and ironically asks herself “if there are people with disabilities in Spain.” What she is clear about is that she does not recommend anyone in a similar situation to appear before the MIR “until the laws change.” In addition, she regrets that studying with a disability is not valued.
Despite the fatigue, disappointment and frustration, Berta will continue fighting to achieve something that she is clear that she has earned “by hand” and with enormous effort: to work as a doctor. “I don’t want a special favor. It’s something I’ve earned for myself. I’ve worked it out,” claims this young woman from Extremadura. Many of her colleagues have offered help, support and legal advice. And she knows that it is a battle that she must fight for herself, but also for those who are after her.
